Fear the Spotlight review: Blumhouse’s lo-fi horror game is imperfect, but sincere
Fear the Spotlight MSRP $20.00 Score Details Pros
- Eerie atmosphere
- Sincere story
- Some great puzzles
- '90s aesthetic feels off
- Out-of-place voice acting
- Heavy-handed writing
High school can be a real horror show. Bullies roam the halls like zombies, every test has life-or-death stakes, and the threat of expulsion hangs over your head like a guillotine. For a young kid struggling to navigate the world, it can feel like being thrown into one of Jigsaw’s torture chambers.
Fear the Spotlight, the first publishing effort from Blumhouse Games, taps into that dread. The story of two girls breaking into their school to commune with the dead turns mundane suburban sights into haunted houses. It’s a microhorror project cut from the same cloth as teen media like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but placed through the lens of gaming horror greats like Resident Evil. That sets the stage for a creepy tale of teenage rebellion told through the language of lo-fi visuals and old-school puzzle box gameplay.
As a work of throwback video game horror, Fear the Spotlight passes, but only with partial credit. It’s a concise creepshow with a dual narrative twist that digs into the psyche of both of its teen heroines. Its attempts to look and feel like a PS1 game miss the mark, though, as it can’t shake the feeling of a modern indie game in a stage costume. The tonal discrepancy dims the spotlight around what’s otherwise an impressive passion project for a two-person development team.
Throwback meets modern
Fear the Spotlight begins amid a late-night school break-in, as Vivian and Amy sneak through the halls in search of a locked-up Ouija board. The duo hope to get some information about a tragic fire that happened at the school long before their time. They get their wish — but you can imagine how that goes for them. That reliable haunted house premise kicks off an eerie first campaign, as Vivian learns the school’s dark secrets via notes while evading a memorable monster with a
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